King Faisal Specialist Hospital’s cardiac center among world’s top 10% in transplant surgeries

RIYADH: The cardiac center at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) in the Saudi capital has entered the top 10 percent of the world’s heart centers in the number of annual transplants.The list is based on statistics of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT).Dr. Jehad Al-Buraiki, consultant and head of the KFSHRC’s cardiology center, said that the center was able to transplant 35 hearts in 2017, including seven to children under the age of 14.He said that the success rate was 87 percent, which is comparable to the averages of 250 heart centers in the US.Al-Buraiki said that last year the hospital witnessed the cultivation of seven hearts for children whose health varied between myocardial infarction, weaknesses resulting from the repair of congenital heart defects and cases that could not wait for the availability of a donor and required artificial heart pumps.He added that the heart transplant program in Al-Takhasami has a follow-up team that conducts internationally approved periodic tests for the implantation of artificial heart pumps.He said that “heart transplants in the hospital amounted to 302 since the start of the program in 1989 until the end of 2017.”